


Fogpunzel

by what_alchemy



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-22
Updated: 2016-01-22
Packaged: 2018-05-15 12:50:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5785921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/what_alchemy/pseuds/what_alchemy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Foggy's trapped in a tower, there is no prince to his princess, and he's done waiting for his story to be written by someone else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fogpunzel

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [the fairy tale prompt](http://mcuflashmeme.dreamwidth.org/1389.html) of the [MCU Flash Meme](http://mcuflashmeme.dreamwidth.org/).

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess who lived alone in a tall tower with no doors and but a single window at the very top. This princess’s name was Foggy, and he often stood at his window to look out upon the forest and greenery full of little animals chittering away. He longed for someone other than his mother to visit him. 

Okay, so he wasn’t a princess. He was overfond of sweets and had the hands of a butcher, Mother always complained. Surely princesses were delicate, ivory little things who didn’t even know what butchers were. And she made sure he knew he wasn’t so much “beautiful” as he “had a great personality.” All he knew of the beauty his Mother crowed on and on about was his own glorious, flowing mane of flaxen hair that had to be brushed all day lest it develop knots and tangles. It was heavy, but it shone like the gold Foggy read about in his storybooks. Mother loved it so much, he couldn’t bear even to trim it into manageability. Not that he had scissors with which he could do such a thing, anyway.

When Mother visited, she would tie her horse outside and call up to Foggy’s window in her loudest, most grating voice, for it alone could pierce the winds and the rustle of the leaves so high up. 

“Fogpunzel, Fogpunzel, let down your hair!”

And Foggy would take a deep breath and braid his hair into a strong gilt ladder. He would hang it over a hook just outside his window and grit his teeth as Mother lumbered upward so slowly, testing the mettle of his poor scalp all the way up. Once in a while, though it caused him shame, Foggy would ignore her so he wouldn’t have to endure the way she spoke of the beautiful world outside his window and Foggy’s doomed virtue should he venture into it. He would ignore her, and when she came visiting next, he would feign ignorance of her previous presence and apologize profusely.

“It’s that damned wind so high up, Mother!” he would say. “Perhaps you should build a window closer to the ground. Or maybe even a door!” 

“Ha!” she would reply. “And expose you to the bands of ravening marauders who would shave your fool head and take you away from me? I mean, from safety? The world outside is harsh and cruel, my love. Better to stay here, with Mother, whose love is warmer than any foreign hearth. Never think again on such nonsense, child, and let me brush your hair.”

“It’s kind of cold in here, actually,” Foggy might mumble, and Mother’s nails, like talons, would drag through his hair.

—

One day, only hours after Mother had left, Foggy heard another voice, smooth of quality and pleasing of timbre, rise up through the wind and the leaves and the cricket song.

“Fogpunzel, Fogpunzel, let down your hair!”

Foggy frowned. He gathered up all his hair and tied it back to stick his head out the window. Down below, he saw a person. He’d only ever seen Mother before, and himself in the mirror. The person below was broad-shouldered and trim, lacking the heft of breasts and padding at the hip Mother boasted, though his hair was as dark as hers before the wires of white had crept in. Foggy decided this was what Mother and the storybooks called ‘a man.’

This man had no horse and he was not dressed in armor as the men of his stories often were. Nevertheless, Foggy was curious, and he could feel his heart begin to rap quickly against his ribs.

“Ho there!” Foggy called down. The man looked up, and Foggy saw that he wore queer eyepieces the color of the sun just before it dipped beneath the horizon at twilight. 

“Greetings, fair Fogpunzel!” the man said. “Let down you hair that I might speak with you on a matter of great importance!”

“I say,” Foggy shouted, “are you a prince?”

“What?”

“Perhaps a knight?”

“Afraid not!”

Foggy’s heart took up residence in the bowl of his belly. How was he to be saved without a prince or a knight?

“This is very disappointing, as you might imagine!” he said.

“You’ll not let down your hair, then?”

“I didn’t say that,” Foggy called. “But first I must ascertain you are not a ravening marauder!”

“I am but a humble man of the law, good sir!”

“Prove it to me!”

“Er — I serve the people of a nearby village,” the man said, cupping his hands around his mouth to amplify his voice. “This tower violates the housing ordinances as set forth by the Queen’s advisors!”

“I live here!”

“Yes, that may be unlawful as well!” the man said. “Tell me, what do you know of the witch’s spell on this land and her hold over the innocent citizens of this village?”

“Which witch?”

“What do you mean, which witch? The old woman who abuses your hair on a weekly basis!”

“That’s not a witch, that’s my mother!”

“Forgive me, fair Fogpunzel, but I believe you have been duped!”

Furiously Foggy began to swoop his locks into a braid.

“Sir!” he said. “I demand you come up here at once and say such a thing directly to my fisticuffs!”

A strange sound traveled up on the wind, jubilant and tinkling. A laugh.

“Peace, Fogpunzel!” the man shouted. “I seek only justice and universal freedom from tyranny.”

“Big words for a tiny man!” Foggy slung his hair over the hook and braced himself against the stone wall. 

The man weighed less than Mother, and he climbed up so quick and nimble that Foggy’s scalp barely twinged at the labor. When at last Foggy yanked him through the window, Foggy intended to show him what-for, but it was only upon beholding him up close that Foggy knew at last what beauty was. 

“Oh,” was all he could say.

The man tilted his head as if in study of him. Foggy drew his hair back inside to stroke it in a fit of nerves. 

“Fair Fogpunzel,” the man said, holding out his hand. “My name is Matthew.”

“Just Foggy,” Foggy said. It made sense, he thought, to put his hand in the proffered one, and he marveled as the man shook it up and down.

“Matt, then.”

“Matt,” Foggy echoed, soft. Matt’s hair was short, his lips red and soft, and Foggy felt all the blood inside himself pump harder as if in response to such a sight. Finally Matt dropped his hand. 

“Right. Um.”

“I don’t have any goods or riches,” Foggy said. “And if it’s my virtue you’re after, rest assured it will not go quietly.” Foggy didn’t quite know what his virtue was, but he was afraid if asked, he would give it to Matt gladly, so it was best to go on the offensive before any such thing occurred.

Matt raised his hands upward, a curious gesture.

“Whoa, hey, I’m not here for that,” he said. 

“What are you here for then?” Foggy demanded. He clutched his silken hair to himself like a dear friend, or so he imagined. “To persecute my mother? To harangue me about matters not of your concern?”

“I just…wished to know if you were safe, up here. All alone.”

“I am! Mother makes sure of it. I’m _so_ safe. Marauders cannot scale these walls, as you can see.”

“So I can,” Matt said, so softly. 

“So you have no business here,” Foggy said, heart quivering. “So you must go.”

“Is that what you wish?”

“Yes.” His heart stumbling, aching through the lie. He wanted, more than anything, to know what Matt’s skin felt like against his own. “Go on now.”

“Very well,” Matt said, and clasped Foggy’s hand once more. It stole Foggy’s breath from his lungs. “But may I return? Now that we are friends.”

Foggy tried to swallow around the dryness in his throat.

“Yes,” he whispered, and could not regret it.

—

Matthew the Man of the Law came at least thrice a week for the rest of the springtime, always neatly avoiding Mother. He brought with him fruits Foggy had never tasted, diverting songs of great deeds, stories of the villagers’ wonderful little lives. He made Foggy laugh, Foggy made him laugh in return, and Foggy became enamored of the sound and sight of it.

Once, Matt told him a story that reverberated around the chambers of Foggy’s heart, and Foggy asked for it several times thereafter. 

“There once was a lonely old crone who knew the ways of the old earth magics,” Matt said, stroking through a hank of Foggy’s hair. “She lived behind a poor but generous man and his wife, a great stone wall separating their property from hers. She had no one who loved her in all the world, and this made her very bitter and cruel. The only things that brought her happiness were the orange groves she cultivated so lovingly on her land. These great trees would grow only on her own property, and she guarded them jealously.

“It so happened that her neighbors, this man and wife, wanted a child desperately, but had endured many disappointments over the course of their marriage. It was only late in life that they had enough gold to entice the crone to give them a touch of her magic, and finally the wife began to grow big with child, and there was much rejoicing. However, soon after the quickening, the man was beset with worry, because the path to motherhood did not agree with his wife. She grew sickly and melancholic, and though she wanted nothing more than to hold her babe in her arms, she wept all day and all night, for her pain and suffering were so great. 

“And then, the first oranges of the season sprouted behind the wall, and she could not take her eyes off them. She became fixated on knowing the taste of such fresh, sweet fruit. The crone turned her coldly away when she offered a purse full of gold for the smallest morsel. In desperation, she pleaded with her husband to pluck but a single orange from the crone’s groves for her, and this poor man, who loved his wife and child so dearly, could not deprive her, though he knew the price of being caught would be high. And so, one cool, misty night, he scaled that wall and stole one lovely orange.

“The crone caught him and would not hear his pleading or his promises of payment. She sneered, ‘you will suffer crossing me forever and always.’ The child was born that very night, a cherub with perfect golden hair, and by cover of mist she whisked him away without even allowing his parents a single kiss.”

“And they never found him?”

“Well,” Matt said. “Many years passed.”

“But he’s still out there, a captive,” Foggy said. “The man and woman must keep looking.” 

“Won’t you come with me to the village, fair Foggy, and meet all these characters yourself?”

“How could I, Matt?” Foggy said. “I don’t even have a door.”

Matt always went quiet, his hands so gentle in Foggy’s hair.

—

Foggy learned to wait at his window day and night for Matt, even when he’d just been by and couldn’t be expected for days. Whenever Mother arrived instead, his heart hurt from loneliness, but still he had to be pious and loving.

“What’s gotten into you, boy?” Mother said one day when the forest was blooming and Foggy could not stop sighing out the window. There was so much _life_ outside, and he was missing it all. He hummed a tune Matt had sung to him just the day before, and behind him Mother went still as the air in the moments before a storm. “Fogpunzel, you will speak when spoken to!”

“My apologies, Mother,” Foggy said. “I long for the taste of strawberries in this weather, don’t you?” 

“What would you know of strawberries?”

“I — I read about them in that book you gave me, Mother,” Foggy said, gesturing vaguely at his bookshelf. His heart threatened to fly right out of his throat. “Thanks so much for my books; you’re so kind to me.”

The muscles of Mother’s jaw worked even as she narrowed her eyes at him. Foggy smiled as brightly as he could at her. 

“I read about oranges, too,” he said. “Have you ever had an orange, Mother?”

She turned abruptly from him, pulling a lock of his hair along with her until he cried out and stumbled away from the window.

“I’ve been thinking about putting a ring of rose bushes around the tower grounds,” she said lightly. “That will boost your spirits, get you out of this queer mood you’re in. Strawberries and oranges indeed.”

“Thank you, Mother.”

Mother’s mouth was hard and tight, and Foggy realized for the first time that he’d never seen her smile.

—

Foggy had read many storybooks. And though he knew nothing of the world, he suspected he was quite clever. His life in this tower was coming to an end, and so, perhaps, was his mother’s hold over the people of the village Matt loved so well. And Mother, cold, sneering Mother who’d kept him locked away so long, must have foreseen the same fate.

He had read enough to know how his story ended if Mother had her way: Foggy, shorn and bloody, wandering about the forest with no sense of where he was while his beautiful man of the law climbed a golden ladder only to plunge to his death amid the rose bushes. If Foggy was very lucky, the thorns would merely pierce Matt’s eyes and render him blind, and they could be together in their brokenness.

That was not his story. He was not a princess, Matt was not his gallant knight, and Mother was not his mother at all.

Foggy looked into his mirror one last time. He was a soft kind of man, rounded about the edges and very different from Matt. He took note of the pale watercolors of his unbeautiful face, and then he stepped back, braced himself, and kicked the mirror until it shattered into a thousand glittering refractions of light.

He wrapped his hands up in the fabric of an old shirt, picked up a shard of glass, and struck his braid from his head.

—

“Stay with me,” Foggy said to Matt next time he came. Matt, his mouth open in wonder, threaded the ends of Foggy’s hair through his fingers. His fingertips grazed Foggy’s jawline, and Foggy’s breath came shallow at the touch.

“You cut it off yourself,” Matt said. Foggy leaned out the window to collect his braid and dumped it heavy on the floor. “You’re so _gorgeous_.”

“Did you hear me?” Foggy said. “I asked you to stay with me, just until Mother comes.”

Matt smiled and cupped Foggy’s cheek. A thrill shot up Foggy’s spine.

“I assume you have a very clever plan,” he said.

“I do,” Foggy said. 

“Then of course I’ll stay with you.”

That’s when Foggy learned how a kiss felt, and none of the ones he’d pored over in his storybooks could compare.

—

“Fogpunzel, Fogpunzel, let down your hair!”

Foggy glanced at Matt, who gifted him a small smile of encouragement and raised the strong length of rope they’d made of Foggy’s hair as if in a toast. Foggy swallowed and steadied his hands. He hauled up his braid ladder, tossed it over the hook, and threw all his weight against the end as an anchor. Matt joined him when Mother began clambering gracelessly upward, and the contact filled Foggy with conviction.

Mother tumbled into the tower with a thick grunt. She scrambled to stand only to pause on her knees, having caught the sight of two sets of feet.

“Hello, Mother,” Foggy said, setting a shard of glass at her pulse point. 

“Gothel,” Matt added conversationally.

“ _You_ ,” Mother hissed at Matt and made as if to swipe at him with her talons.

“No, Mother,” Foggy said, stepping in front of his man of the law. He nicked Mother’s neck and she gasped. “Just me.”

She diminished before him, a gnarled little stoop of a woman with great black eyes in her head, pleading. Foggy nodded to Matt, who shoved Mother into a chair and wound the rope around her wrists, her ankles. Foggy’s hand fell to his side, but he gripped the glass tight.

“I’m your mother, dear boy,” she said. “Everything I’ve ever done, I’ve done for you.”

“Let’s not stand here and lie to each other, Mother,” Foggy said. “Maybe if you’re very good, I’ll visit you once a week.” He shrugged. “But hey, maybe you’ll just die here, in your own filth, with no food and no water and no one to speak to. Who’s to say?” Mother snarled at the tightening of a knot as if she could reach Matt by the gnashing of her teeth. 

“Fogpunzel—”

“And you’ve gotta stop calling me that, seriously.”

“He’s blind, you know,” she growled. Matt straightened up behind her and faced Foggy straight on. “A poor, blind orphan with nothing to his name,” Mother went on. “He can offer you nothing because he is nothing. And what are you now but a lowly, unworthy thing, without your hair, without a mother who loves you?”

Foggy looked at Matt, whose mouth turned down in an unhappy little moue. He was facing _toward_ Foggy, he realized, not at him. But he’d touched him, and known him, and forged a singular union with him. What was sight but a distraction in the face of such harmony? Foggy’s heart went swollen inside him. 

“My own man,” he said, and looked down at the ruin of his mother. “And his.”

—

Foggy climbed onto Mother’s horse behind Matt, wrapping the remnant of his braid around himself.

“I’ve never ridden one of these before,” he said. He threw his arms around Matt’s middle and propped his chin on a muscular shoulder. “I hope you can steer this thing, blind or not, because I sure can’t.”

“I get by,” Matt said, and Foggy caught a glimpse of a half smile. “Where to first?”

“The man and the woman from your story — are they still alive?”

“You know,” Matt said, “I believe they are. Used to run the butchers’ shop, but they retired and let their daughter take it over a couple years ago.”

“It would be nice,” Foggy said through the thickness at his throat, “if we could visit.”

Matt did something with his thighs that made the horse whinny and take off at a gallop. The wind caught Foggy’s hair and he could have sworn he was flying.

—

Princess Foggy and Matthew the Man of the Law did not live happily ever after. They settled into the village where they were both born, they helped their fellow villagers when they encountered injustice, they celebrated, they grieved, they fought and made up, and on this foundation they built their own happiness.

**End**


End file.
